monsbrick

My name is Marie Marguerite Brickner. I go by Mons to my family as my middle name is Montserrat.

I have been asked to come clean about my other profile. It’s over 10 years old and I didn’t swap at all for a long time. I had one “3” rating over there when my swap partner and I disagreed about what a commute aid would be. Well I shouldn’t feel so bad about it. Let things go!!

I did have another profile connected to my maiden name: Marie Marguerite Agcaoili and mm.agcaoili@gmail.com or mmmontserrat@gmail.com or monsbrick@gmail.com.

I cannot seem to recall which email I used nor which username but I guess it's in the cloud somewhere.

I have not been hiding it. I have over the 10+ years tried to merge these two profiles.

I have messaged the site administrator about trying to merge the two accounts or whatever she has to do.

Experimenting with art. I've only been doing art for about a year now.

Stamping Collage Coloring Mixed Media: watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils, markers Vintage items Junk journals

Paper really gets me, but all kinds of ephemera, textures, styles, types of paper, lately I've been loving art papers from Italy and France.

The only craft I don't really do is die cuts; but I do cut out shapes free form with my scissors and paper cutters and knives. But I don't use machine die cuts.

I used to list a lot of things I like and it just seems like a long list. I like many many things. I've been both a Republican, a Democrat, and undeclared. When I was young, I loved to debate. Lately I don't do much in the way of politics. But I do love grassroots though I've been in the White House with Cheney and Rumsfeld and fed workers in the fields who were just grateful for anything. Of course, it is the simple things, doing simple work that was the most fulfilling. And it wasn't doing handouts but co-operative projects where we participated together to feed each other. I read that Mother Teresa told us here in the West, in the USA that we are spiritually hungry. We are famished.

I'm nearly a senior citizen, not yet a card-carrying member of AARP but they've offered membership for maybe a decade now.

Nice things about getting old are not feeling slain by love and unrequited love. I used to let my first boyfriend depress me. And of course, vindicated 40 years later he finally apologized for breaking my heart when I was barely 14 years old, and over and over again.

Getting old is laughing at these love games and watching them float by like leaves blowing in the wind. Or clouds that pass in front of the moon. They don't last long. Even though it may feel dark at the time. The weather changes.

For a while, maybe a year, I let Death scare me. After most of my life, letting death pass left and right. But many doctors have used the "C" word (C for Cancer) on me. Thankfully it has not yet ever morphed into real cancer. They've thought I had kidney cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer, and gum cancer. Each time it scares me.

I think it's not the Death itself that scares me. I fear more the longsuffering and the pain. And what is it but a thought right now. Thankfully it is not a reality. It's only a silly Fear.

Here are a few more details to help out folks who are trading letters and correspondence with me.

Plurality is probably a good word for me. There are really no types of music I don't like. The music I find myself gravitating towards the most are soft rock hits from the 1970s. My stepdaughter once had a friend ask if we could listen to music from this century! I also like Pop Music though when I am most stressed out there's a whole part of me that switches to jazz. I am not stuck up about the type of jazz though I used to only like straight ahead and bepop jazz. I'm pretty flexible.

As a child, my Dad was a National Dancer from the Philippines. I grew up banging on the ground and listening to the ethnic dancers pounding the floor with their feet, with bamboo sticks, and drums that are sort of flat and lay on the ground.

My grandmother was my piano teacher and then I had a scholarship at a local music conservatory. I quit music because I decided I didn't want to dedicate 8 hours a day practicing piano. That was probably the biggest career decision I made in my life. I think I made it around 16 years old. But my Mom's sister was some super prodigy and she played in Carnegie Hall when she was a kid and took lessons from Horowitz. I figured, I'd never be that good. And she didn't seem very happy with her music though I will say she did become happy very late in her life, after her mid-60s. She did start playing in many four-hand recitals and performed with a group of friends. But it was more like good fun and fundraising and that point. Not as much about the financial success nor the career achievement.

The most classical music I listen to now is when I shop at my local video store. I love to hangout and chat with the owner. There's something community oriented about her shop; though I suspect she makes most of her money from the back room (21+over) room where I never go. Anyway, she's a big classical music fan. She plays fabulous concerts and playlists and I make a weekly or twice weekly visit to her shop.

Sabrina, my stepdaughter asked recently-- who some of my favorite authors are. I gave her a short list to prevent overwhelming her.

Instead of listing all the authors...which I have limited to two bookshelves at home.

I'm a big fan of Little Free Libraries and we have over 50 I've listed that I patronize or visit. It's like treasure hunting! They are each like treasure chests and I love to add my extra books to the flow of books, maps, magazines, even stationery or pads of paper sometimes I add. Or other bookish things, CDs, DVDs.

Ah, so I like to limit my book hoarding and to share the fruits...

Here is a short list of the books I suggested to Sabrina. She is going to Japan for her first time this summer. I happen to love Japanese fiction. My favorite is always Banana Yoshimoto, especially her first novel/ novella, Kitchen.

By the way, she did read Kitchen within one sitting and loved it. Yay! But it's not for everyone. We are very open-minded about gender here and I will say that was one of her favorite parts of the book and I didn't ruin it for her though I may have ruined it for you just now.

And then there is Haruki Murakami. Just there's a side of him that is a bit of a pedophile or he's always leering at young women and I've had to stop reading a few of his books because they've gone too far. But overall I enjoy his works. She already had started one of his books but they tend to be long.

His non-fiction sort of partial memoir or more like a diary/journal book: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running just makes me want to go on and a run and stop writing and stop drawing.

The books I can't get enough of recently seem to be apocalyptic fiction. Not books about the apocalypse, but I think it's after Peak Oil or something along those lines. Anyway, I don't read them because they are in this genre, I just happen to love these-- but then you know how I can be morbid if you've followed my profile this far!

Hugh Howey--everything he writes I basically sit down and cannot sleep until the book is over. I started with The Shell Collector. I ordered his book by accident when I was trying to order Doerr's book by the same title. But then I never went back to read Doerr and I love Howey. I've also got to read the stuff he published online, I"m not a big Kindle reader though I have book readers on my phone and computers. He also did the Wool, Dust, and I read SAND first which is an offshoot and I liked it the best, but it was meant to be read after but I started there. I think I liked Sand the best.

Also Paolo Bacigalupi and I avoided his books like the Windup Girl. Then finally I succumbed at one of our real brick and mortar libraries. It just jumped out at me and I took it home. And found it irresistible. I feel kind of sad when I read his works and yet I cannot stop reading them. I have devoured all his stuff now and I have to wait for him to catch up to my voraciousness.

Similarly, I'm waiting for the next William Gibson book to come out. I've read his books over & over. I tend to love his books on audio. They just sound beautiful read out loud.

I do love poetry and we keep small books in our bathroom of poetry, big anthologies, and haiku and one of the books I'm reading is part of the journals from Jack Kerouac.

Also on my nightstand are Stardust by Neil Gaiman and The Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice.

Honestly, my TBR: to be read book shelves are more than two IKEA bookshelves with books stacked up in front of books. I will include a short list: John Muir, Paul Hawkins, Oliver Sacks, James Beard, Paul Theroux, a few new Hugh Howey audiobooks I've just downloaded on my Audible, Marco Polo's The Travels, The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum, Yukio Tsushima's Territory of Light, Linotte the early diary of Anais Nin, Black Spring by Henry Miller, Art, Espionage & Sex Magick in the New World: Aleister Crowley, and William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac's And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.

News, I watch oodles of news I like to sweep across all the channels including international and business news.

Recently learned that IBM corporation owns the Weather Channel and I've been geeking out on the shows there.

Podcasts are another favorite for me. I listen to Freakonomics from public radio in NY. And Terry Gross' Fresh Air from Public Radio too.

I listen to Krishna Das' podcasts and I sometimes play his entries over and over. I'm also addicted to kirtan chanting. I don't understand the Hindy holy names. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the Beatles were into it for a while or if I care. But there are days when I don't listen to anything except Hari Krishna and I sing along and say the words.

Oh yeah, one of my all time favorite books is by JD Salinger, it's a short story called "Franny & Zooey" where Franny starts mouthing and chanting and praying ceaselessly. I get her. Even though I don't think I could explain or teach it to anyone else. I just get it. Not in a magical way. Not for Nirvana. Nor salvation. Just a daily practice. A thing.

Sports-- I don't do any competitive sports. I've done 5Ks, 10Ks, Marathons, I thought at some point that I would become an Ultrarunner. It's not too late. The great thing is that you can be an Ultrarunner here locally (in the San Francisco, California, USA) area at a 5K (that's about 3 miles) on a local trail and you just keep adding a mile per week and before you know it you're doing ultra runs! But alas, I'm not running all that much any more. I'm that kind of a person, where I feel sort of lukewarm about an activity and then I get more and more obsessed and suddenly ... but alas, that's old me.

I used to put on raves: though they were the kind of raves that did not allow alcohol nor drugs. I realize most people associate raves with those two things but I still do events that are not that way. But more and more I am slowing down though we do go to dance events and enjoy electronic dance music.

I do still do Yoga and Swim and Walk my dog daily.